Hydrogen fuel cell cars are far from mainstream as less than 6,500 were sold globally since 2013 (through the end of 2017).

Toyota Mirai at ITM Power hydrogen filling station

According to Information Trends, the counter stopped at 6,475 at the end of 2017 and more than half were registered in California, which puts the U.S. (53%) at the forefront for FCV adoption.

Japan takes second place with 38%, while Europe is at 9%.

On the manufacturer side, Toyota delivered more than75% of all hydrogen fuel cell cars ever made with a small 13% and 11% accompaniment from Honda and Hyundai. By 2021, a total of 11 automakers are expected to offer FCVs.

In 2017, sales of FCVs more than doubled the total sales in all previous years.

Honda Clarity Fuel Cell

Information Trends, in its report “Global Market for Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles, 2018,” forecasts that FCVs at some point in the future could become more popular than BEVs, which we don’t believe at all.

“Hydrogen infrastructure is coming along steadily, albeit slowly, said Naqi Jaffery, the lead author of the report. In northeast U.S., hydrogen station buildout is gathering momentum, giving automakers a second market in the U.S.

According to Jaffery, a respectable hydrogen fueling ecosystem will not be ready until 2020. The slow buildout of the hydrogen stations has given an opening to battery electric vehicles whose sales are rapidly gaining ground.

Jaffery, who is bullish on the future of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, said battery electric vehicles will be short-term beneficiaries of the movement towards zero-emission vehicles. However, as the hydrogen infrastructure evolves, fuel cell vehicles will pick up traction.”

Just how many fools are out there, willing to buy fool cell cars? (And again, it’s not actually the fuel cell that’s the problem, it’s the use of wildly impractical, horrendously wasteful, and ridiculously expensive hydrogen fuel.)

I believe that most are leased. A couple of folks I have encountered here in SoCal appear to have altered their days so that they can get hydrogen regularly. I don’t think the technology is going to make it, especially if the Tesla Semi works, because I think heavy trucking might have been an application that made sense.

FCEVs so have a very important part of the future of clean transportation. I’m a Tesla owner and I think BEVs are the current solution but I also think FCEVs have a very important part to play starting with fleet trucks where it would be easier to put hydrogen fueling infrastructure in place.

As we struggle to get charging infrastructure in place for owners who cannot charge at home there may also be an important market.

The biggest challenge of course is the chicken and egg problem. Nobody wants to buy a FCEV unless they can fuel it and companies don’t want to spend millions per station building it until there are customers which has limited the adoption to small geographic areas.

Agreed! I’m a Tesla owner too and I’m getting pretty tired of the “having to pick a side” in the BEV/FCEV discussion. No, I am not picking a side. I like both technologies, and also think there is a future for both of them, coexisting. This whole side picking reminds of Mac/Windows, iPhone/Android… only worse. We’re not in high school anymore, people.

By the time it will be millions BEVs on the road, it will be billion gas cars on the road. Oh wait, we already have this billion. Scrap it, rewind, we need to figure out better talking point to pump TSLA.

I don’t own any Tesla stock, but did buy a used Tesla after 6 years with my Nissan Leaf. BEV need very little maintenance decreasing total cost of ownership. As soon as the batteries get a little cheaper it will be the beginning of the end for ICE vehicles. Tesla isn’t the only BEV manufacturer, there are plenty of others jumping into the ring.

It’s only Tesla Hater cultists who see this as some sort of battle between Tesla and fool cell cars.

If Tesla vanished from the face of the earth tomorrow, other EV makers would appear to keep advancing BEV tech.

Nothing can save fool cell cars, or the wasteful, dead-end boondoggle of trying to use hydrogen as fuel for wheeled vehicles. Fool cell cars can’t even compete with current BEVs, let alone the ones we’ll have in another 10 years!

They had a 13 year head start on everyone (well, except Honda with the Insight) with the Prius; Since the early 2000s lots of people were modding them at great expense to put batteries in the trunk to DIY a plug-in version. Had Toyota done this, they would rule the field.

Bingo!
I charge two cars at home and still send power back to the grid…and get a modest check from my utility each year.
This is becoming so obvious that it is impossible to listen to the arguments for hydrogen.
I took my son’s Prius to a crowded gas station a few weeks ago. The more than 15 minutes it took to fuel his vehicle is more time than I spent plugging in my car at home for the entire year!! The big “DUH” sign is fully illuminated.

30 seconds? Do you have legs? I’m pretty sure that even with the EVSE sitting in my trunk, I can plug in in half that time. At home, I can hit the garage door button, plug in the car, and sneak out under the garage door before it closes.

While Fuel-Celled vehicles are in somewhat of a horserace with other vehicles (ICE, CNG, LNG, BEV, PHEV) – I doubt there is going to be a huge percentage infiltration in the North American Market for these reasons:

1). The car is more expensive to manufacture than ICE’s or other electrified products.

2). The dispensing stations have a multitude of current problems – not likely to be fully addressed anytime soon, to wit:

A). Reciprocating Compressors *Cannot* currently be used due to the extreme difficulty in removing any blow-by in the compressed hydrogen. Alternate compressors that are used have poor reliability.

B). A decently size dispensing station takes up a VERY LARGE amount of real estate if it is going to be of the FAST-FILL variety (its true that “TIME FILL” is smaller, but they aren’t practical for non-fleet driving).

C). A decently sized dispensing station currently costs over $3 H2/kg. The electrical requirement of such a station is around 500 kw. This will no doubt be reduced in the future as a transition to Methane powered compression and Adsorbtion refrigeration is used – but the current products in use are electric. The maintenance cost of all this equipment has turned out being much higher than forecast.

H2 to me seems only viable in places where it is subject to huge governmental largess, or, in places where ICE vehicle fuel is taxed extremely heavily.

If you located a station in areas of ‘free electricity’, (Idaho, West VA, Washington state, or Quebec), its true the cost of H2 would decrease… But the cost of battery powered cars would decrease faster.

1. Of course they cost more now, none of the cars or specialized equipment has been mass produced. Toyota says they can get FC Cost parity with ICE in the early 2020’s. And Toyota is a real company that sells around 10 million vehicles a year with 40+ manufacturing facilities around the world. They don’t tweet out unrealistic pipe dreams every week either.

2. The new stations are reliable and perform just fine. But you wouldn’t know that because you have no idea about the current state of hydrogen stations.

2A. Ever heard of ionic compression? No? Of course not.

Now tell me specifically where I can recycle a 1,300 pound Tesla model S dead battery (because the 2012’s are going to start dying in a few years) and how much will I have to pay. Hint: see Kinsbursky Brothers in Anaheim, CA

Hydrogen and batteries are the future and your attempt to talk like you know anything at all about hydrogen is amusing, at least for a few minutes. Watch China, they have begun mass production of the very thing you hate.

Its true my ‘information’ may be somewhat date but please quote an independent study yourself.

My comment was ‘information based’. You have provided no information yourself other than flapping your gums. I would welcome an independent more recent analysis. Provide current photographs of the equipment if you can.

Bill,
If you didn’t bother to update your information, why repeat the same obsolete talking points from last decade over and over again? It is equivalent to talking that battery cars will never get up because lead batteries are heavy and short lived, and all gas cars have electric starters now :/ Times are changing.

Interesting read. This report, produced by FCV interested parties was written in 2009. It makes several interesting predictions for 2020. Public charging infrastructure for BEVs will cost more on a per vehicle basis than for FCVs, 1,800 vs 1,500 euro. Right now FCV charging stations are about $1M per stall and Tesla is installing superchargers for about $2k each so it is really hard to see how BEV stations are more expensive than H2 stations. They also state that FCVs will be cheaper to purchase than BEVs, that BEVs will never have batteries larger than 30kWhr or be able to go farther than 150km at highway speeds.

Seeing as my info is admittedly dated at 2014, its superior to yours since it is far more current than your nonsense from 2009.

These reports constantly talk about 2020-2050 (from a 2009 point of view), its trivially easy to talk about the future – no one can challenge you since it hasn’t happened yet. The one thing YOU IGNORE is that experience SINCE THEN has proven retail distribuiton is FAR MORE EXPENSIVE AND UNRELIABLE than had been expected in 2009.

Hydrogen-Blabbermouth lops me in with ‘hydrogen haters’. That is wrong. Also his link says Chinese Hydrogen production from COAL is reasonably priced. I have no complaints about that.

I was dealing (in my comment) strictly with retail distribution issues at the corner store. Seeing as I have provided the most MODERN up-to-date information of anyone, I wish SOMEONE would come up with:

Bill Howland:
“Seeing as my info is admittedly dated at 2014, its superior to yours since it is far more current than your nonsense from 2009.”

Which report? I didn’t written them, so they are not mine. I have linked 3 of them. If want to dispute specific facts, please point to them. I can point to newer one on specific information. If you just want generalized rant, I can’t help.

“These reports constantly talk about 2020-2050 (from a 2009 point of view), its trivially easy to talk about the future – no one can challenge you since it hasn’t happened yet. The one thing YOU IGNORE is that experience SINCE THEN has proven retail distribuiton is FAR MORE EXPENSIVE AND UNRELIABLE than had been expected in 2009.”

OK, so you want to talk about H2 distribution costs? How about stating you points, not exclamations? Who exactly proved it, where are the quotes and numbers? Companies and governments all around the world are still deploying this retail distribution, are they all just “idiots” who don’t know that they are doing?

Retail level H2 distribution is just couple years old and rapidly changing. Mirai wasn’t even available in 2014. If you are claiming that data from 2014 can prove that distribution is impossible at reasonable cost, it already sounds laughable before reading anything beyond “2014”.

…
“1). More modern info than 2014.

2). REAL operating cost of a typical California H2 dispensory, not hiding behind “PROPRIETARY INFORMATION”.
”
This information is collected by CARB and DOE as part of the funding comes from government. As well as information about reliability and station availability. But why would you need to focus just on operating cost of low capacity (some 200 kg/day) initial technology stations in the first place? There are capital costs, delivery costs, car manufacturing costs (or lease payment) – these are higher than dispenser operating cost, and obviously not the same as scaled up costs.

There is some operating cost data at the end of annual CARB evaluation from last summer:https://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/ab8/ab8_report_2017.pdf
Another summary from NREL: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68554.pdf
There are more details in individual project funding requests and various documents scattered around. I see little point digging out every little detail out of individual station projects and their learning curves. Yes, initial deployment is certainly expensive, R&D costs money, one-of-a-kind projects are very expensive. But it doesn’t prove anything about possibility of scaling up the infrastructure. Forklifts seems to work on similar infrastructure just fine in business environment that doesn’t allow significant downtime. CNG stations sell compressed gaseous fuel all over the place at $2-3/gallon equivalent. Obviously not exactly the same, but one more extra stage of compressor and cooling doesn’t make fuel at price of gold.

Nuvera demonstrated FCV fueling using electrochemical compressor in 2016. Once electrochemical compression will be cheap and good enough for production, it will change a lot and not just for hydrogen.

Yeah, as far as Ionic Compression goes, both GE and Whirlpool WERE supposdly going to come out with a cheap ‘home’ CNG refueler 5 years ago for around $500.

Both companies have completely dropped the project, and Honda doesn’t even make a cng civic anymore certified for home-refueling.

Seeing as CNG and LNG has had proven savings for larger vehicles, you’d think that Home refueled CNG vehicles (of which only the Chevy Impala and Silverado – as well as their panel trucks are the only production vehicles with a manufacturer’s warranty available).

But – the fallback position is just for those very very few people who buy (or take a chance on) CNG vehicles is to go to the local gas company compressors and get them to sell you the gas.

Point is , I’m not interested in Pie in the Sky projections, since 95% of them fall by the wayside.

One thing is very certain: THE UNBELIEVABLE EFFORT being put in to make H2 viable.

Its humorous in its own way that with all this “Moses moving mountains” effort, they are only now talking about 19 high-capacity (what I call decent capacity) stations.

Its obvious that the promoters of all this did Not EXPECT boring technical problems (that make all the difference).

Now, with plenty of subsidy, there is no argument from me that they will force this to work, at least in California.

But, California’s Budget troubles may start to interfere before they complete their high flying plans.

HFCV rechargable battery isn’t different from regular hybrid battery, under 2 kWh. 50-100 less than BEV battery, and so recycling problem is 50-100 times less.

There is nothing special to recycle in FC stack, just metal and carbon.
Platinum is already recycled just fine, recovery rates vary, from 50% for catalytic converters to 90% for industry average. But platinum content in PEM FC is getting reduced every year, down to 10-12 grams per next generation automotive FC. And now platinum free PEM FC are getting into production as well.

Nothing close to the magnitude of 1000 pound lithium battery mining, manufacturing and recycling problem.

The fuel tanks in a HFCV have a 15 year certification rating from the date on which the car (or tank?) is manufactured. It is UNKNOWN if after that date whether the tanks must be replaced or can be re-certified after pressure testing them (like SCUBA air tanks).

15 years is pretty good. When current owners decide to junk their Mirai after free fuel expires, I might get one cheap just to use the tanks for airgun. I wonder if anyone used 10K PSI H in airgun. Might make for some incredible performance.

O.K. 14 years ain’t bad, but what will be the cost to certified or replace it?
Probably not relevant, since the car won’t be running from other worn parts.
And if it’s sill running, because nobody know how the fuel cell stack will hold in real life either.
But I suspect that since most of the cars are rent, it doesn’t matter anyway.

Despite all of your “work” bashing hydrogen (from a perspective of near total ignorance)- hydrogen fuel cell tech advances every day. We’ll wave at you suckers spending 1/4 of your life waiting for electrons to flow into your 1,000+ pound lithium packs. Keep charging on… or something. And hope there’s no line before you get to your cherished plug!

You sound like you get all your “understanding” from Tesla stock pumping and worshiping propaganda sites for idiots like Elektrek :/

Please do yourself a favor, go do some real reading of serious scientific studies and reports, not just cherry picked emotional “facts” from fan advocacy pop-“science” groups like UCS, then we can talk.

HydroGenesis2020, do you actually own a FCEV? What are you going to do when free fuel period expires? Are you going to pay 2 to 3 times more money than gasoline equivalent for fuel?

Of course, H advocates assume the prices will go down, but it hasn’t yet. I’m just trying to see what you’d do in a hypothetical scenario (or more likely reality) where H prices are still 2 to 3 times higher than equivalent gasoline prices.

Science denying fool cell fanboys are even more amusing. I especially enjoy seeing you using tired, old, completely debunked EV hater talking points, because you don’t have any honest arguments.

For example, Tesla Model S battery packs are lasting even longer than we thought, and since they have low toxicity, they could be legally thrown into a landfill — should someone be so foolish as to throw them away rather than repurpose them for backup storage for home solar power systems!

Since you obviously think the limits of physics and thermodynamics can be simply handwaved away, why not just go directly to perpetual motion? It would be just as easy to do that, as to magically make the pernicious hydrogen molecule into something that would make a practical fuel!

But hey, good luck with your Big Oil shilling. It’s pretty obvious why battery-electric cars have Big Oil so worried that they pay people like you to promote the “hydrogen economy” hoax!

Fool sells are big oils play don’t forget that. Now they’re saying they can make H2 from regular gas. How convenient keep people paying big oil. I wish people would wake up and realize that H2 is a scam and not green at all. Plus just think of all the hoses and valves that will need to be replaced. Way more parts than a BEV. New studies have found that BEV’s can be charged 5x faster than they do today. Existing cars that is minus the leaf since the batteries run hot already.

Well, you can make H2 from gasoline or other practical (hydrocarbon) fuels, by using a reformer. Of course, that means you’re just converting one fossil fuel to another (we call it “frackogen”), but practical or environmental details like that don’t seem to bother fool cell fanboys, who airily handwave away all practical difficulties and real-world limitations.

If you say A and admit that it is the only realistic and scaleable option for intermittent solar/wind electricity storage over season, how about saying B? Even if you can, there is little point or advantage to burn that stored hydrogen to produce electricity. You can use it directly in a car/truck/train/ship if it is already stored. It is going to be cheaper than 1000 pound batteries.

“…there is little point or advantage to burn that stored hydrogen to produce electricity.”

Hey, I agree with you there.

“A difference which makes no difference, is no difference.”

The difference between burning (fast oxidation) H2 as a fuel to produce electricity, and consuming it in a fuel cell to produce electricity (slow oxidation), makes little difference. Either way, it’s highly inefficient, very wasteful, and highly polluting on a well-to-wheel basis.

“Perhaps they could add a few extra steps:

1) Use the hydrogen in a fool cell to generate electricity

2) Use the electricity to electrolyze water to hydrogen and oxygen

Steps one and two can be repeated as many times as necessary to get to the desired level of inefficiency.”

I wonder what FCEV owners will do when the free fuel period ends. Are they going to pay $16.50/kg to drive essentially a Corolla (Mirai) or just junk it? Seeing how H prices haven’t changed around here over a year, I doubt it’ll be much less in 2 years when free fuel period ends.

I heard second tier residential rate in San Diego got to around $0.50/kWh. What a coincidence, $0.5*33 kWh/gge = $16.5/gasoline gallon equivalent 😉 Are you going to junk your SparkEV or drop your work to be able to charge at day time directly from personal PV? I heard netmetering incentive isn’t going to last forever as mid-day is already seeing oversupply of solar electricity.

gge gets me far more miles than gasoline. At 5.4 mi/kWh batt to wheels on average and 85% charging efficiency, that’s 4.6 mi/kWh. gge would get me 154 miles. 2 gge would get me 308 miles, about that of Mirai.

So even at $0.50/kWh, it’d only cost $34 to drive about 300 miles, about the same as SparkGas.

But if it did go to $0.50/kWh, I’d get solar. You have no such option with FCEV.

You don’t need such option with FCEV, automakers pay for fuel, or lease payment covers it. It is $0.00 per mile for you at 12,000-20,000 miles/year and it doesn’t matter if you rent or own, have trees above your roof or no access to roof at all, your roof looks South or North, your utility still pays you full retail netmetering price for your generated electricity at noon when nobody needs it, or doesn’t pay anymore.

Back to real life of mass market cars, fuel cost is of secondary importance for most of population, and it shows on regular hybrid sales by the way. Just few percents of new car buyer want to pay only few thousands extra for cars like 52 mpg Camry Hybrid. New car depreciation costs much more than fuel. Or you can call it lease payment.

Does Toyota actually sell the Mirai? As I understand it, most or all of the cars are leased. So hopefully, the lessee can just trade it in for a practical car at the end of the lease, never having to pay the ridiculous $14-16 per kg for H2 fuel.

Hopefully, few if any fool cell car “buyers” are actually foolish enough to actually buy one. Leasing one is foolish enough!

Mirai has MSRP, so some must’ve bought it. My harping on cost is public service announcement for anyone thinking of buying FCEV. While science may seem nebulous to them, money is concrete measure they can easily test for themselves.

“Sold” is a stretch since the “lease” cost of the Mirai minus the free fuel and free real car rentals several times a year and so on comes to around $150 a year, on a car that lists at $56,000 or something. So a good number of these could actually be said to have been given away, and still demand is not great.

Just went and checked again. We’re up to a whopping 39 H2 fueling stations in the US! Woot! (Just as a reminder, FCEVs are completely dependent on fueling stations, as they can’t be home charged like BEVs, and in fact can’t be fueled anywhere other than an H2 fueling station – no refilling them from a can like an ICE.)

FCEVs remain unusable throughout the majority of the US, due to lack of fueling stations. For the same reason, they’re also useless for distance travel. And without massive fuel subsidy, they’d be completely non-viable even in California.

“Just went and checked again. We’re up to a whopping 39 H2 fueling stations in the US! Woot!”

And even worse, each of those 39 stations will fill, at best, only 2 or 3 dozen fool cell cars per day. So if the average fool cell car gets filled once a week, then those 39 stations would, at best, support only approximately 8190 fool cell cars. (Actually probably less, since older H2 fueling stations can’t dispense as much H2 per day as the newest ones.)

By comparison, in California one single gasoline filling station services, on average, 1100 cars per day. That’s 7700 per week, again assuming a weekly fill per car. And those gas stations cost far, far less to build and to maintain than H2 fueling stations!

The closer you look at using hydrogen as a fuel for wheeled vehicles, the worse it gets.

I could be wrong, but I have seen so many sites on D.I.Y. electric cars that I would not be surprise to find out there are more hand-made electric cars on the roads today world-wide than there are hydrogen fuel cell cars.

Science deniers regurgitating Big Oil propaganda and trying to promote the “hydrogen economy” hoax, does not qualify as a “discussion”, any more than a Russian troll farm spreading fake political news qualifies as “discussion”.

It’s gratifying to see so many people step up and denounce these Big Oil shills and EV bashing FUDsters.

Are you suggesting that all proponents of hydrogen fuel cells are paid for by oil companies? What if they support EVs too? I know such people exist because I am one such person. And I’d like to know where I can get my check from big oil for supporting hydrogen fuel cells. I’d also like a check from electric car manufacturers while I’m at it.

Very exciting and this is only the beginning! With the travel provisions for ZEV credits ending this year for plug-ins but not for HFCVs the compliance value for HFCVs should quadruple or so. Currently every HFCV sale is worth up to $45K in ZEV credits but that could be way more than that pretty soon! The fuel is already thrown in for free of course but soon HFCV makers can afford to give away the cars for free also, so thanks to the topsy turfy world of ZEV mandates HFCVs are starting to make sense economically after all!

Free FCEV AND free H might make sense, but that can’t last. Even the free H is only for 3 years. If the car was free, one can simply junk it and get another free car+fuel for 3 years. No amount of ZEV will make that happen.

As for ZEV credits, companies will be swimming in them as more EV become popular. Value of ZEV is what others will pay, and the demand just won’t be there. If Toyota really need ZEV credit, it’d be cheaper to buy from Tesla or GM than giving away free FCEV+fuel.

That is complete and utter BS and FUD. HFCVs currently earn the same number of credits as a BEV with comparable range. The only difference between the two with regards to CARB ZEB credits is that EVs no long have the “traveling provision” for ZEV credits while HFCVs do.

Looks to me like you’re both wrong, at least according to an article dated Sept. 2016. However, Chris O’s assertion that “every HFCV sale is worth up to $45K in ZEV credits” doesn’t appear to be exaggerated by all that much, and who knows? Maybe ZEV credits are worth more now than they were back in 2016.

“The two cars, Toyota Mirai and Honda Clarity, will snag nine credits each per sale, compared to four per sale for the Tesla Model S or three per sale for the Nissan Leaf that California currently awards. Each credit is worth $3,000 to $4,000, according to Reuters.”

No. As usual, YOU Pu-Pu are wrong again. I said “currently” and you dig up an article from 2016. FYI dumb-dumb, it’s 2018, not 2016.

From 2018 onwards, the number of ZEV credits that either a BEV or HFCV receives is determined soley by the vehicle’s All-Electric Range (AER) under the UDDS Test Cycle. Additional credits are no longer awarded for “Fast Fueling,” which only HFCVs were able to achieve.

ZEV Credits = (0.01 x UDDS range) + 0.50

The minimum UDDS range allowed for ZEV credits is 50 miles. ZEV’s with less than 50 miles UDDS range get zero credits, while a ZEB with exactly 50 miles UDDD range gets 1 credit under the formula above.

The maximum ZEV credit is capped at 4 credits, which works out to a ZEV with 350 miles of UDDC range.

(A) ZEV Credit Calculations. Credits from a ZEV delivered for sale are based on the ZEV’s UDDS all electric range, determined in accordance with the “California Exhaust Emission Standards and Test Procedures for the 2018 and Subsequent Model Zero-Emission Vehicles, and Hybrid Electric Vehicles in the Passenger Car, Light-Duty Truck, and Medium Duty Vehicle Classes,” adopted March 22, 2012, which is incorporated herein by reference, using the following equation:

ZEV Credit = (0.01) * (UDDS range) + 0.50

1. A ZEV with less than 50 miles UDDS range will receive zero
credits.

2. Credits earned under this provision 1962.2(d)(5)(A) are be capped at 4 credits per ZEV.

My major observation on these H2 threads is it is always the same serial anti-Tesla trolls who post their joy of fool cell cars and unicorn “cheap” H2.

Gee, I wonder why that is.

Meanwhile I live about a mile from an H2 pump in California and drive by it several times a day.

I have only ever seen exactly ONE very ugly and lonely Coyota Mirage, err Mirai there because these wholly impracticable fool cell cars are really just completely subsidized cars and fuel and filling stations diversions and unicorns from what I do see hundred of times a day—PEVs.

FCEVs so have a very important part of the future of clean transportation. I’m a Tesla owner and I think BEVs are the current solution but I also think FCEVs have a very important part to play starting with fleet trucks where it would be easier to put hydrogen fueling infrastructure in place.

As we struggle to get charging infrastructure in place for owners who cannot charge at home there may also be an important market.

The biggest challenge of course is the chicken and egg problem. Nobody wants to buy a FCEV unless they can fuel it and companies don’t want to spend millions per station building it until there are customers which has limited the adoption to small geographic areas.

I hear your point of view Robert G, but I fear your enthusiasm, and those of other FCEV proponents, are going to turn your smiles into frowns.

It might be nice to live in a world with Hydrogen stations on almost every block, quickly dispensing a full tank of fuel to your car, at an economical price.

If you wait 50 to 100 years you might actually see this.

But as of now, only one of the projections made by fuel cell advocates has come to pass, that of a cheaper, longer lived fuel cell. Other costs and maintenance issues have been higher than they’ve expected.

Surprising – since the pressures required always made Hydrogen Highways a daunting task. I simply don’t think there is going to be enough universal support to FORCE this technology on people prematurely until basic technology of the daunting problems matures.

The biggest issue with hydrogen is the ROI. BEV are a reality right now, made mostly possible by an upstart company that proved what an electric vehicle could do, and hugely hindered by the traditional manufacturers that have waited to see how it would play out.
How long as a society are we prepared to keep wasting resources (whether monetary or physical)? Look at companies like Apple, sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars, money in the bank, what are they really doing to further the human race?
I don’t have a crystal ball, so I don’t know what the future holds, but for the average person driving average distance, the BEV is really hard to beat and only getting better every year. Hydrogen still seems to be an incredibly expensive industry that just looks like it is trying to perpetuate the same service station model that has been in operation for the past 100yrs.